Make An Old Fashioned Pound Cake Southern Style

Posted: 10 years ago | By: Christine Somers | In: Food & Drink | Read Time: 3 minutes, 20 seconds

I am searching for the best pound cake recipe; that's kind of my "thing". My mom had a killer coconut pound cake recipe that I shared with you last spring and everyone who baked it, loved it. She has a caramel nut pound cake recipe that I am going to share but I thought I should back up and go with the basics before venturing off into specialty territory.  

I will begin with a little pound cake history lesson. The Brits are given credit for creating this tasty dessert in the 1700s. While they may have created the basic recipe, we Americans have made it our own...particularly down South. The name comes from the fact that the original pound cake was made from a pound of each of the following...flour, sugar, butter and eggs.  The batter was a 1:1:1:1 ratio, which ultimately made it easy to reduce the size of the recipe. Cooks wanted to decrease the size because a pound of all these ingredients made a huge cake, more than a family could really use. As decades rolled along, cooks wanted a lighter cake so ingredients such as baking powder or baking soda were added. Today, whipping cream, sour cream and even Sprite is used to enhance the texture of the cake.

Marty once asked me if my mother and grandmothers were good cooks. And I could honestly answer that both my grandmothers and mom were excellent cooks. As far as desserts were concerned each one had their specialties. My Grandmother Somers made the best hand cranked homemade ice cream with my favorite being her peach ice cream. Maw Maw, my mother's mom, made a killer strawberry cake and banana pudding. Mom's best dessert was homemade pecan pie and even though it was from a box, the Duncan Hines German Chocolate Cake. I found a couple of pound cake recipes in Mom's Blue Box but from the hand writing, I think one or two of them may have come from my grandmothers. 

A lovingly prepared homemade dessert is as close to heaven as we are going to get on earth. I am a purest and I like my pound cake plain but it is tasty with fresh fruit or a maple berry sauce. Grandson #2 immediately suggested filling the center with chocolate and adding a side of ice cream. That is the wonderful thing about an old fashioned pound cake, you can eat it plain or add your favorite side. I would love to hear about your favorite pound cake recipes or other homemade desserts. 

Hugs,
C

Old Fashioned Pound Cake

Ingredients:

3 sticks of salted butter
3 cups of sugar
6 eggs
3 cups of plain flour
1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 cup of heavy cream

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees
Grease and flour tube or Bundt pan

1. Sift flour and soda together and set aside.
2. Using a mixer, cream butter and sugar until fluffy.
3. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each egg.
4. Mix in heavy cream slowly and beat thoroughly.
5. Mix dry and wet ingredients together.
6. Add vanilla and mix.

7. Pour into tube pan and bake 1 hour or until done. Toothpick test recommended.
8.. Take out of the oven and cool for 15 minutes. 
9. Remove from pan and finish cooling. 

**To avoid cake failures, bring eggs and butter to room temperature.
***I found that this cake took 90 minutes to bake. 
****I used a new pan for this cake, a Nordic Ware Blossom Bundt from Williams-Sonoma. I also used the Bak-Klene ZT Nonstick Baking Spray. The cake came out perfectly, almost too perfectly because #1 grandson asked me where I bought the cake. I wasn't big on the spray because it was very thick. I am not sure how this pan would work if I tired to hand grease and flour instead of using some kind of spray because of the nooks and crannies in the pan. I now think I prefer a traditional Bundt or tube pan for this kind of cake.